High School Student Forced To Remove Photos Online By School

An amateur teenage photographer in Flower Mound, Texas, had to delete a large portion of his online portfolio under threat of suspension recently.

Anthony Mazur, 16, worked as a photographer for the yearbook staff at Flower Mound High School where he would snap pictures of his peers at sporting events.

“I really just like capturing moments,” he told WFAA.

After posting his photos online, though, he was given an ultimatum by his principal: take down his photos of students online or face the consequences.

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(Photo: Anthony Mazur)

“It just feels like a bureaucratic nightmare and we can’t spin ourselves out of this,” Len Mazur, Anthony’s father, told the news station.

He had been selling the photos through his Flickr page to parents and students. His rate was $5 a photo.

However, when the school discovered his operation, he soon found himself pulled out of class and into the principal’s office. Administrators first told him that he could not make money from his photographs. Later they told him that it was to protect the privacy of the students, WFAA reports.

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(Photo: Anthony Mazur)

Currently, he is being told that he cannot abuse his access to the sidelines during games.

“They’re trying to coerce me,” the 16-year-old continued, “with threats of in-school suspension. And making some weird comment about reporting me to the IRS.”

(Photo: Anthony Mazur)

A spokesperson from the school has spoken to reporters, saying, "LISD's practice is if anyone attending a public district event takes photos using their own device from an area accessible to the public, the district would not interfere with those photos being posted to a third-party site."

Anthony has since bought a Canon T5i with the hopes of building his portfolio back up.

"I have a right to do this," said Anthony. "This is my art that I own."